Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-01-11
JAMES LICK'S MAUsOLEUM.

The remains of James Lick, with con-
siderable ceremony and due solemnity,
were on Sunday placed beneath the foun-
dations of the superb monument his wealth
has raised to the cause of scientific research.
We are to judge the lives of men not
only by their walk upon the earth, but by
what they leave behind them. James Lick
in his lifetime did not draw men to him,
or attain to the level of the popular, nor is
it in evidence. that he made efforts to do
So But dying he left the material results
of life of toll and self-subiection to bene-
fit his fellow -men- indeed, he ordered
entry upon his schemes of benefcence prior
to his death.
The chiefest of his gifts to science is the
observatory upon Mount Hamilton. 1t is
to be crowned very shortly by the greatest
work yet accomplished by man in astro-
nomical fields. About July next the great
telescope will be mounted, and not long
thereafter the property, transferred to the
custody of the Regents of the State Uni
yersity,will belong to the people of the
State of California. That such gift, and
one that promises so much, continues to
excite lively Acknowledgements of gratitude
is creditable alike to our humanity, and
the spirit of our people, that so strongly
commends all efforts to enlarge intelli-
gence and broaden the area of human
knowledge. Hence it was fitting, emf
nently SO, that with due ceremonial method,
the bones of the founder and builder of the
greatest astronomical work of the world
should be laid away beneath the magnifi-
cent structure that arose at his bidding.
For the building and equipping of this
monument to science, where his body now
reposes beneath the massive pier of the
great equatorial telescope he was planning,
when to men he appeared most sordid,
eccentric and wholly selfish, he set apart
the sum of 100000, and imposed the OBJ
legation in the trust deed that there should
be constructed for the observatory "a pow
erful telescope, superior to and more pow
full than any telescope yet made" Just
prior to this declaration the great instru-
ment at the Naval Observatory, Wash
ington, had been set up, containing an
achromatic objective in which, it was be-
lieved, the limit of possibility, as regards
size, had been reached. Possibly this in
spired Lick to provide for an effort to
eclipse that of 1878; and thirteen years
later it was DONE For, after infinite labor
and many years of experimenting and dis
in which science more than
once lost faith in the possibility of accom-
plishment, success was achieved, and less
than a fortnight ago the thirty-six inch
clear aperture objective was delivered at
the observatory massive structure of
greater length than the Capitol building
in this city, and which, with its fine
library, photo-heliograph and heliostat,
transit, photograph and meridian circle
houses, stands in the midst of a grant of
1 600 acres, ceded by the Federal Govern
ment for the purpose.
Others may lavish thousands upon mar
bic mortuary piles to preserve their names
before men; such mutable records of vain
endeavor will crumble and decay, and time
efface all memory of those in whose names
they are reared. But for the centuries to
come, when men shall speak of CALIFORNIA;
great observatory, or contemplate the
progress of astronomical research it is to
promote, there will be inseparably con-
nected with such themes, the name and
benefcence of the strange and eccentric
man upon whose dust science is building
an imperishable monument.